In the last 65 years, floods in India have caused damages worth Rs 37,82,47,04,70,000 and killed at least 1,07,535 people and 60,49,349 cattle. In this period, a total of 8,07,17,993 houses were also damaged in flood-related incidents.
The Parliament House in New Delhi was just 10km away from the reach of Yamuna’s turbulent and menacing waters. Given the river’s mood, the possibility of the water reaching there wasn’t completely out of question. A newspaper alarmingly predicted that the Rashtrapati Bhawan too would be flooded. But it, and the sanctum sanctorum of Indian democracy, remained safe. What didn’t was, Jehangirpuri, a slum located far-off in North Delhi, where houses were submerged and only rooftops pimpled the landscape.
Its residents, nearly 1.5 lakh in number, flocked out as water level rose alarmingly. Some stubbornly stayed back to salvage their belongings, only to find themselves marooned on their crumbling rooftops because Yamuna’s whooshing water was unsparing. As panic-stricken people started taking shelter elsewhere, loot became common in the locality, which was set up on the floodplains of Yamuna during the Emergency.
For days to come, filth and stench blanketed Jehangirpuri. Its people were living their scariest nightmares with their lives turned topsy-turvy. Floods weren’t alien to them but this scale was.
The year was 1978 and the month September. It was the time of the year when monsoon is generally at its fag end. Agricultural fields, especially in the Indo-Gangetic plains, are lush with paddy, drenched sufficiently in monsoon showers; people by now have had enough respite from the scorching sun; headlines on vector-borne diseases dot newspapers; and in Delhi, the temperature hovers around 30 degrees Celsius while the air is irritatingly humid, but bearable.
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